The Burning Read Free

Man’s list.’
    ‘He’s not dead.’ My heart was pounding. If he was dead, that was it. No answers. No trial.
    No justice.
    ‘Nah, he’s clinging on. He’s in hospital. In surgery, at the minute. Two stab wounds to the abdomen; she lacerated his bowel.’
    ‘Ouch.’
    ‘Yeah, couldn’t happen to a nicer person.’
    ‘Anyone we know?’ I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand and tried not to yawn.
    ‘Not known at all. Never been arrested before, and he hadn’t come up in this enquiry.’
    I sighed. That wasn’t great news. We hadn’t even been close to catching him, then. We’d just been lucky. Though the girl had been luckier still. I wasn’t a fan of people wandering around carrying knives, but I’d seen enough dead women in the past few weeks to think it wasn’t such a bad idea.
    ‘His name’s Vic Blackstaff. He had all his documents on him – driver’s licence, work ID. He’s in his mid-fifties, does shift work for a call centre in Epsom. Lives in Peckham. Drives through south-west London to get home in the small hours of the morning. Plenty of opportunity.’
    ‘Older than we’d thought,’ I commented. ‘Shift work fits, though. Where did it happen?’
    ‘Richmond.’
    ‘That’s quite a long way out of the usual area. Up to now he’s stuck to Kennington, Stockwell – nowhere as far out as Richmond.’ I was frowning.
    ‘Yeah, but his usual area is flooded with uniforms. Makes sense that he would be hunting elsewhere, doesn’t it?’ Rob sounded confident and I gave a mental shrug; who was I to second-guess a serial killer?
    ‘They’re going through his car at the moment,’ Rob went on. ‘We’re waiting at the hospital.’
    ‘Who’s we?’
    ‘Me and the boss. And DI Judd, unfortunately. We’ll be interviewing the young lady as soon as the doctors tell us we can talk to her. She’s still being checked out.’
    ‘How is she? Is she—’
    I didn’t want to fill in the rest of the sentence. Is she going to make it? Is she badly beaten? Is she burned? How far had he got?
    ‘She’s fine. Shaken up. Nothing wrong with her but we haven’t been allowed in to see her yet. She says she’s not ready.’ Rob sounded impatient, which nettled me. Why shouldn’t she take her time before speaking to the police? She’d had a shock. What she needed was a sympathetic ear. And I was the ideal person to provide it. Energy flooded through my limbs, adrenalin pushing fatigue into a corner, to be ignored until I had time to give in to it again. Three hours’ sleep was plenty. I was already out of bed, making for the door, stumbling on rubbery legs that ached as if I’d run a marathon the day before.
    ‘Well, I’ll be there soon. Maybe they’ll let me talk to her.’ The perks of being the only woman in Superintendent Godley’s inner circle were not legion, but now and then it came in handy.
    ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Nought to sixty in ten minutes, that’s you.’
    ‘That’s why you phoned me, isn’t it?’ I was in the bathroom now, and debated whether I could risk peeing while on the phone. He’d hear. I’d have to wait.
    ‘I knew you’d want to be here.’ That was only half the story; it suited them all for me to be there. I could hear Rob grinning; he was a smug git sometimes, but I could forgive him, because when all was said and done, I did want to be there, and without a call from him, I wouldn’t have known a thing about it until I’d seen it on the news.
    ‘Which hospital?’
    ‘Kingston.’
    ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ I said before I’d thought about it properly. It was a long way from Primrose Hill to Kingston and I desperately needed a shower. My hair was sticking to my head. There was no way I was leaving with dirty hair. Not again. ‘Make that forty minutes.’
    ‘We’re in the ICU. Phones off, so ring the hospital if you need us.’
    ‘Will do.’
    I flicked the water on before going to the loo, but even so, it wasn’t even close